Guest column
Backroom staff should be seen and not heard Martin Johnson on the relationship between managers and staff
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lot of opprobrium has been heaped upon Jose Mourinho after the Chelsea manager’s decision to demote the two members of his medical staff who ran on to the field to attend to one of his players, but some of us understand perfectly well why Jose had steam coming out of both ears and a complexion the shade of a freshly boiled beetroot. Mourinho explained afterwards that he couldn’t be doing with people on his bench who didn’t understand football, and he was bang on. Jose knew, and the two medics should have known also, that when a Premier League footballer falls to the ground and starts rolling around in agony, there is absolutely nothing wrong with him. It mattered not a jot that Eden Hazard’s death throes resembled a freshly shot stag. Jose knew that, on the list of probabilities, a broken leg was way behind an eyelash getting into his eye, or a sudden unexpected sneeze somehow blowing him off his feet, and the Chelsea manager knew also that once the medics were involved, the player would have to leave the field. Yes, the footie season is back again, and in the nick of time too, reminding impressionable children after their summer hols that the way to get on in life is to have more sneaky tricks up your sleeve than the next man. The kids of today need to be aware that ranting and raving is always the best course of action, and in Jose they have the perfect role model. In Mourinho’s world the football manager is always bigger than the referee (unless his name is Wenger) which is why the rage he flew into when his medical team responded to the referee’s signal for them to come on to the pitch caused him so much grief. Referees are there to be ignored, is Jose’s mantra, just as fourth officials are only on the touchline for managers to shout at them. It wasn’t always like this, was it? Certainly not when I grew up watching Newport County during the time Billy Lucas was manager. Three times, in fact, between 1953 and 1974 with only a couple of years away when he had a brief spell in charge of Swansea City. I don’t recall Billy ever leaving his seat in the stand, where he’d sit fairly impassionately, in his overcoat and trilby, for the entire 90 minutes. Heaven knows he had reason enough to shout and bawl on the touchline, especially on the memorable day his leading striker, Ralph Hunt, put a penalty so far over the crossbar that it bounced on to the road bridge behind the stand, carried on down the hill, and ended up in the car park of Billy’s own pub, the Black Horse.
Neither do I remember any manager standing up, let alone waving their arms around inside what is curiously described as the ‘technical’ area. You can go back to the 1966 World Cup final, when Geoff Hurst’s fourth goal prompted trainer Harold Shepherdson to jump up and down in sheer excitement. A celebration Alf promptly nipped in the bud with the immortal line: “Sit down Shepherdson. And stop making a spectacle of yourself.” What is it with modern managers that makes them sprout horns for 90 minutes? One of the never to be forgotten sights of last season was Leicester City manager Nigel Pearson with his hands around the throat of a prostrate Crystal Palace player, partly the product of a man who never stopped revealing his inability to control himself, but mostly the fault of regulations which permit a football manager to encroach so ridiculously close to the playing area. It’s not just soccer that causes the people in charge to behave badly. Two years ago, during the Premiership rugby final between Northampton and Leicester, a slightly robust tackle on one of his players prompted the Tigers’ Richard Cockerill to come storming down from his seat in the stand for a word – and not a quiet one either - with the fourth official. Resulting in a nine-match suspension for ‘obscene, inappropriate and unprofessional’ language. Rugby union is learning fast from football. Dean Richards’ involvement in the fake blood business at Harlequins was a world away from his own playing days at Tigers, when, as a Hinckley bobby on the beat, he never had time to dream up shady schemes. His thoughts were mainly confined to asking his colleagues if they’d mind swapping shifts, and informing the Tigers’ secretary which roundabout he’d be waiting for the team bus to pick him up from. Another former Tiger, Neil Back, was caught doing something underhand on camera, but not by the referee, in a European Cup final. It was probably a game winner, and justifiable to himself at the time no doubt. It’s long enough ago for him to have found room to apologise in the book he’s just written, but all we get is the observation that he’d ‘do it again’. And rugby matches now take about three hours to play, given that every time a player falls over injured, all these ‘rehydration’ wallahs come sprinting on. And anyone who thinks that this is out of genuine concern for players’ welfare, rather than an orchestrated wheeze to bring on tactical messages, must also believe in the tooth fairy. A chum of mind told me that the Mourinho outburst was perfectly understandable given the ‘huge pressure’ (his words) modern managers are under. What tosh. As ever, I quote the line from the great Australian cricketer Keith Miller: “Pressure? Playing cricket? Having a Messerschmitt on your arse. That’s pressure.”
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